Ever crack open the paper and read, "Ellen Ellen Bobellen rose from bed Thursday, received her diploma from St. Abbatoir's School for Girls, and proceeded to plunge from a high cliff, thus proving that there are no second acts in American life?" I'll bet you haven't. Ever crack open the paper and encounter that phrase about how there are no second acts in American life and been immediately slapped across the face with the story of a second act--or a third or fifth? I'll bet you have, and I'll tell you what: There is nothing but second acts in American life.

Eli Meyer

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You know what we don't have in American life? We have very few compelling five-act structures with a gripping cliffhanger at the end of Act Three, followed by a chance to use the bathroom and drink a stiff martini. But we do have that at Fuji Ya.

Act One began in 1959, when Reiko Weston opened a little 25-seat restaurant at Eighth Street and LaSalle Avenue for her parents, Kaoru and Nobuko Umetami, Japanese émigrés with a flair for cooking. The restaurant flourished. Act Two (working title: Prosperity) began in 1967, when Fuji Ya moved to a whopping 400-seat restaurant on the west bank of the Mississippi near the Stone Arch Bridge, setting the standard for Midwest Japanese cuisine. There was even a Fuji 2 in St. Paul. In 1988 the restaurant was forced from its location, and closed.

Act Three (New Beginnings) is set in 1998, when Carol Weston Hanson, daughter and granddaughter of the Fuji Ya originators, and husband Tom Hanson opened a new-generation Fuji Ya in an elegant bamboo-toned storefront on Lyndale Avenue and 27th Street. While the spot was embraced by patient well-wishers, it was plagued by service problems. By the time 2000 rolled around, Fuji Ya was suffering all of a restaurant's biggest trials: The sushi chef who built the place's great-but-slow reputation fled for richer pastures, taking his sideman with him; the parking lot seemed to get smaller and more convoluted with every passing day; and to add injury to insult, Fuji Ya lost its lease just as Minneapolis rents were skyrocketing.

What would happen to our heroine? Would young Fuji Ya be forced to squeegee windshields and sell matches in newly burgeoning Lyn-Lake?

Nah. Of course not. All it took was a chunk of capital and the vision to transform a former tire store on Lake Street between Lyndale and Garfield avenues into a complex both hip and polished.

Building the restaurant nearly from scratch has allowed Fuji Ya to neatly accomplish a number of highly desirable effects. For one, they've nearly doubled their kitchen area and increased their sushi and kitchen staff, additions that have, on my recent trio of visits, erased their heretofore ceaseless service troubles. For another, they have a 40-some-seat bar area, a China-red and gold room where a half-moon sushi bar and long, tall regular bar face off over cozy little tables. These tables are perfect for sharing a drink, be it a glass of sake from an expanded list, or a martini and a few appetizers, or sushi, an invaluable addition to greater Uptown life. For another, Fuji Ya is on the south edge of one of the vast new Lyn-Lake parking fields. There's so much parking, you could hold a family reunion in the bar. If you had a particularly hip family, that is.

If your family is less martini-and-maki than tempura-and-green-tea, there's a large, spacious dining room, given a modern air by sculptural geometric tree cutouts, flanked by three zashiki rooms, perfect for intimate groups. (Or dining with toddlers. They love being table-high, and they can fall asleep on the floor without fear of being stepped on.)

On my recent visits, I found food at Fuji Ya to be better than I remembered it. I was particularly dazzled by an order of grilled yellowtail cheek (hamachi kama, $7.25). Here the tender curve of fish between gill and body is salted and grilled until it boasts a hatchwork of black grill marks. Each bite distills the essence of hamachi, the white California tuna, without one unnecessary addition. A bowl of udon noodles with vegetable tempura ($6.95 at lunch, $11.50 at dinner, vegan at special request) delivered fat, tender noodles in a delicious broth next to a mound of lacy, greaseless tempura made with a nice assortment of vegetables, including sugary, nutty slices of acorn squash. A plate of mixed oshinko ($4.75) was a generous assortment of sweet, dry cucumber pickles, squash, tangy burdock, and absolutely beautiful ink-black mushroom pickles.

All the Fuji Ya favorites remain unchanged: Steamed pork shumai dumplings in a wasabi wrapper ($5.95) are still appealingly sweet and hot; harumaki, vegetarian egg rolls with a spicy mustard sauce ($3.95), are still salty and earthy. All the sushi I tried was flawless, if not fabulous. Fuji Ya co-owner Tom Hanson says the sturdy state of Fuji Ya's sushi should be credited to chef J.R., who has been running the sushi bar for a year now. Sake, or salmon ($4.25 for two pieces), was the best I tried, but I've noticed that salmon all over town has been particularly good for the last year--why is that?